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Paul Nyhan

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When Angelica Gonzalez left home at age 11, all she wanted was a safe place where she could go back to school. Abandoned by her mentally ill mother, she was raising herself on the streets of her Phoenix neighborhood, never in school, and narrowly avoiding the gangs and crime that seemed to be everywhere. “I just knew if I stayed there, something really bad was going to happen. You never knew when your luck would finally run out,” Gonzalez said. By the time Gonzalez turned 23, she was far from those streets, with a degree from the University of Washington Tacoma and a decent apartment outside...

This story is by Luba Bezborodnikova, executive director of Educare of Greater Seattle and Associate Superintendent for Early Learning at Puget Sound ESD. In the State of the Union address last week, President Barack Obama called for high-quality child care and pre-kindergarten that prepares all children for school and life, one built upon the best research and run by highly-skilled educators. The president could have been describing a model program in Seattle’s backyard. In White Center we have run a cutting-edge early learning program, Educare of Seattle , for working poor families for...

If you think the federal budget stalemate means things are not changing in your community you are sadly mistaken. The standoff has slammed Head Start’s doors, and eliminated opportunities to prepare for school, in the faces of 750 potential preschoolers around Washington state. How? Last March, the budget impasse triggered across-the-board cuts in federal spending, an ominous but vague-sounding step that’s having devastating effects on local families. Head Start lost 5 percent of its overall funding and that meant 750 kids couldn’t enroll in Head Start in Washington this year. Since March the...

If you think only new parents and preschool teachers care about early education think again. A few weeks ago, a group of Washington state superintendents, principals, kindergarten teachers and parents called for bigger investments in preschool. You might think they are worried about getting enough money for their K-12 schools this year, given the state’s lean budget. But, they understand preschool’s importance better than most because they see what happens when at-risk students don’t go. These students start kindergarten behind and often never catch up. To help all students start school...

Gov. Jay Inslee reappointed Dr. Bette Hyde to lead Washington’s Department of Early Learning during the next four years, a critical period when the state will work to ensure that its early learning systems continue to grow and are sustainable. The new governor had been moving through his appointments since taking office in January, but had not yet announced who would lead the cabinet-level early learning agency. On Tuesday, he tapped Hyde, who oversaw key stages of the construction of the state’s new early learning system and led a successful Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge...

Head Start works. A new study is sparking a debate about just how well the early education program works because it shows Head Start’s impact fades out during the first four grades of elementary school. Now some analysts are using the findings as political leverage to suggest overhauling the program or cutting its funding. Before policymakers start slashing funding, they should consider this report is simply the latest in a growing body of research on Head Start’s effectiveness, and plenty of that research suggests that Head Start works. Take a step back and you can see decades of studies...

(A version of this story originally appeared in Birth to Thrive Online .) Last year Congress failed to agree on how to cut the federal budget deficit and that means 1,400 children could lose their spots in Head Start programs around Washington state this January, a new report says. The reasons for the cutbacks are well known in the other Washington. A special congressional panel couldn’t agree on $1.2 trillion in federal spending reductions, so Congress and the Obama administration agreed to a budget deal that will trigger across-the-board cuts in federal discretionary spending in January...

The U.S. economy continues to sputter and that means state legislators around the country are once again debating deep cuts in spending. Here in Washington, the latest round of budget-cutting threatens to wash away one of the state’s vital though too often overlooked programs for families: Prenatal dental care. Today, Washington covers dental care for low-income pregnant women, and it’s a smart investment. A new mother with healthy teeth passes less cavity-causing bacteria to her baby and often establishes good oral hygiene habits for her children, which means healthier families and Medicaid...